While I know that Spelunky 2 isn't here on GOG as of yet, I have some thoughts to air.

Primarily, from what I've seen and viewed, Spelunky 2 takes the Kaizo World approach to difficulty. Less skill based challenges and more absurd "GOTCHA"s of traps and circumstances suddenly driving runs into the ground with an untimely demise. Now that jetpacks are wearable bombs, and so many other interactions have changed, it doesn't seem that one can take the methodical approach of analyzing the level and approaching it from a sane way.


And with the branching paths, the difficulty ranges from "the jungle is literally full of hurt". to "This new area is easier than the mines."

Does anyone else want to air any thoughts?

To me, Spelunky 2 is not a bad game but is worse than the 1. It has some cool features I wished the 1 could had, but eventually it has too much wasted potential. The problem with Spelunky 2 is not the raw difficulty, but the frustration it delivers to the player.

Spelunky 2 features more levels, and each level is more crowded, so runs are much longer. At the same time, there are many ways to be instakilled (crushed, lava, snares, infinite damage loops...) and events that can wreck your run or force you to heavily rebuild (curse, poison, fail to get a key item). Also, the solution to many of your problems is just to wait them out.

If you combine all these three, you end up with a game where the player invests too much time and effort in each run, and and the same time everything can go off the rails with a single mistake. Not only this is frustrating, it also encourages playing extremely cautiously, which isn't funny on the long run.

In comparison, Spelunky 1 offers a faster pace, and replaying it over and over doesn't feel tedious at all. Even the BS deaths you got were less common and more forgivable.

Many players try to brush off this criticism barking "git gud", but that's not the problem. I have mastered games that are more difficult than Spelunky 2, it's just that they are more respectful with my time, or that allow me to have fun during the first levels I have already mastered, or that teach me to play aggressively because that's the best way to succeed.

Spelunky 2 really encourages waiting, which means the safest play tends to be the most boring one. Scared to get pass through two moles and a lizard? Wait until one of them walks right below your position, jump on him, retreat, repeat. Scared to climb down the drill chain wihle lava is dripping? Wait a minute and the drip will lower its frequency. Scared to beat Olmec the hard way? Wait 2 minutes on top of his head until he blows away the floor (they have recently patched this one, because everybody was doing that).

Yeah, you can take risks and try to learn how to do things faster and eventually break that cycle, but dying is so frustrating that you have to endure a lot of pain to discover advanced moves and strats by yourself. This could work for ultra experienced players, but is putting off even Spelunky 1 veterans. Spelunky 2 seems to actively try to prevent the player from learning how to beat it, but not with extra content or smart learning curves... just with raw frustration.

On a lesser note, I find it stupid that the game happens in the moon but has the same biomes as the previous one. Yeah, the moon has an underground jungle, egyptian temple, and even a chinese themed bikini bottom, filled with flora, fauna, atmosphere, inhabitants and even gold based economy. This is so dumb and disconnected that you often forget you are supposed to be on the moon.

I like the branching paths and secrets. I like the crazy "endless" mode, even if I think it's broken (having no damsels/altars makes being poisoned/cursed a death sentence). I like some new traps and enemies. And I like the aesthetics of most of the biomes, they have a lot of polish.

I like the fluid physics, but only aesthetically: having the lava follow these physics while being an instakill makes the player not wanting to blow up any lava pit, ever.

I like the new item variety and mounts, but I dislike that the Kappala is still so overpowered that you are expected to always get it. The need to farm HP via Kappala narrows your playing choices, it's not funny to try to always sacrifice every damsel and Helping Hand and then farm blood by exterminating every enemy.

I dislike boss battles, they are essentially equipment checks. You have the right tools, they are super easy. Otherwise, you are done. They are great for the first handful of runs until you learn how to beat them, then they become annoying time consuming obstacles.

This is a long and detailed post, so I'm going to collate it into a numerical reply set.

1) I suppose one could call it frustrations. Or more simply, Fake Difficulty; in that most of it relies on a denial of information than anything actually empirical.

2) Poisoning seems exactly like the kind of middle finger to serve as a trap for new players and nothing else. Once you've encountered it, it ends your run and you learn to avoid it. Seems pointless.

3) Not to mention the sheer serendipity of an explosion going off in a shopkeeper's personal bubble or a turkey dying near wossname can just screw things up entirely; I'm surprised they kept the misblaming system.

4) I've heard Spelunky 2's locations compared to "Frozlunky", which is basically just Spelunky 1 but massively overtuned.

5) Right, I've seen players who can crush Celeste, held records in Rogue Legacy, or dealt with anything Kusogrande say that Spelunky 2 isn't that fairly made.

6) Waiting, when there's always that timer to send a ghost after your butt. And if you're very lucky, an accidental autosummon.

7) And even the shortcuts that Spelunky 2 does provide, it all honestly seems...not worth it, given that most rewards and unlocks require a "DO IT IN ONE" type of run.

8) I'm pretty sure in the times I've watched people play this, the whole Moon thing has come up 0 times. It seems pointless to mention and there's nothing to indicate it. It's just a slightly different tileset with new locations.

9) The branching paths seem like a good idea, but many of them are poorly telegraphed or such obvious choices over the other; why do Temple when Lava, or why do Mothership when X, and so on?

10) The Fluid Physics seem...weird. Things act more like a goo than actual liquids. Which for molten rock, fair enough. But for water? Not so much.

11) Except many of the new items seem so rare as to be functionally unknown; being locked to specific routes and locations.

12) Most of them aren't even fights, they're obstacles to go around, just like Olmec in the original.

Later thoughts on further reflection:
Spelunky 2 seems like a middle finger to players of Spelunky 1 and speedrunners.

It seems to hold actual contempt for the player, given how many things have to be done in a single run along with the angonizing amount of steps it takes to unlock something as simple as seeded runs seems to be from the Ed McMullen school of, "Hey, who said you could have fun?" of thought.

Some really good thoughts here. I agree with most of them. I've learned most of the path of Spelunky 2, but the accidental deaths make it not worth it. Totally agree with the Kapala being a must-have (and also easy to get with all the bodies around).

I think the main issue though is the lack of variety vs. the challenge. Roguelites have a mix of variety and challenge, but the Spelunky design always had minimal variety compared to other rogue-lites due to its limited items and set level order. The challenge-variety balance of Spelunky HD was still sufficiently good. The main source of randomness was the level layout, but that was sort of enough. The main issue was the Black Market. Even though you never had enough money to buy all the items, you could easily rob it, thus obtaining all the items and depriving the game of the little variety it had (different runs having different item variations).

Spelunky 2 completely solves the crime run issue, but still brought back the Black Market, while at the same time giving you enough money to buy everything you need. So once again the variety is reduced, and there aren't enough competitive items to make different builds viable. The result is that every run feels nearly the same. Placing bosses after each section serves to make the runs monotonous even more, as do the fixed features of the levels which are needed for the long runs (the challenges, Excalibur level, lava dead end level, etc). The Temple is far too hard to be worth it given the general difficulty of the game, so nobody ventures there. Despite these new paths, it still feels just like Spelunky HD's worm and spaceship levels - levels that really aren't worth doing. And while the variety has decreased on average, the challenge has gone up significantly. Your best move when seeing something dangerous (like a witch doctor) is not to engage -- the danger is just too great. This isn't enjoyable gameplay.